Two great forces are now in fierce but unresolved contention. The material revealed by Edward Snowden through the Guardian and the Washington Post is of a wholly different order from WikiLeaks and other recent whistle-blowing incidents. It indicates not just that the modern state is gathering, storing and processing for its own ends electronic communication from around the world; far more serious, it reveals that this power has so corrupted those wielding it as to put them beyond effective democratic control. It was not the scope of NSA surveillance that led to Snowden’s defection. It was hearing his boss lie to Congress about it for hours on end.

Last week in Washington, Congressional investigators discovered that the America’s foreign intelligence surveillance court, a body set up specifically to oversee the NSA, had itself been defied by the agency« thousands of times ». It was victim to « a culture of misinformation » as orders to destroy intercepts, emails and files were simply disregarded; an intelligence community that seems neither intelligent nor a community commanding a global empire that could suborn the world’s largest corporations, draw up targets for drone assassination, blackmail US Muslims into becoming spies and haul passengers off planes.

Yet like all empires, this one has bred its own antibodies. The American (or Anglo-American?) surveillance industry has grown so big by exploiting laws to combat terrorism that it is as impossible to manage internally as it is to control externally. It cannot sustain its own security. Some two million people were reported to have had access to the WikiLeaks material disseminated by Bradley Manning from his Baghdad cell. Snowden himself was a mere employee of a subcontractor to the NSA, yet had full access to its data. The thousands, millions, billions of messages now being devoured daily by US data storage centres may be beyond the dreams of Space Odyssey’s HAL 9000. But even HAL proved vulnerable to human morality. Manning and Snowden cannot have been the only US officials to have pondered blowing a whistle on data abuse. There must be hundreds more waiting in the wings – and always will be.

The immediate cause of the cancelled bilateral summit—which will not prevent Mr Obama from attending a meeting of G20 leaders in St Petersburg on September 5th and 6th—was Russia’s grant of temporary asylum to Edward Snowden, the ex-spook on the run after leaking details of spying on global phone and e-mail records by America’s National Security Agency. Congress, not to mention public opinion, would have been outraged had Mr Obama carried on with summitry-as-usual.

But the White House set its decision in a wider context, listing frustrations predating the Snowden crisis, from a lack of progress on missile defence and trade wrangles to the treatment of Russian civil society. There was offsetting talk of areas where Russia has been helpful: over Iran and North Korea, and in granting access to Afghanistan through its territory.

But a final grumble on the list, “global security issues”, hinted at a large dispute of the moment: Russia’s defence of the Assad regime in Syria, and threats to deliver an advanced air-defence system to Syria that would gravely complicate future Western or Israeli air strikes or no-fly zones over Syria.

Mr Obama has spent years tolerating anti-American rhetoric from Russia, including harassment of his diplomats and American-funded projects. Growing political repression and anti-gay campaigns prompt revulsion among Obama supporters back home. Yet a day before the summit’s cancellation Mr Obama called Mr Snowden’s asylum merely “disappointing”, adding that “a lot of business” can still be done with Russia.

Alas, Mr Putin is not in the mood for serious business, and Mr Obama has no time for small talk.

Huffington. Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency’s massive surveillance programs had proven « beneficial. »

Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA’s domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation’s principles.

No American outlets covered Carter’s speech, given at an Atlantic Bridge meeting, which has reportedly led to some skepticism over Der Spiegel’s quotes. But Carter’s stance would be in line with remarks he’s made on Snowden and the issue of civil liberties in the past.